Francesco came up with an idea for a new option: Reboot before installation starts. I like it, but thought some more about it: is it necessary?

I don't have a current XP/Vista disc with WPI on it. So I am drawing a blank: When XP and Vista finish installing don't they reboot anyway before WPI is started? Or do they finish, close, WPI runs, desktop loaded?


Francesco: Explain in detail how you want to use it.

Hi

Yes. The system is finished, but then installs/configures the User settings when desktop is loading.
Perhaps if you install an application like MSInstaller, IE8 or SEP (Symantec Endpoint Protection) that requires a reboot before something else is installing because of the PendingFileRenameOperation is hunged up.

But they are ways to come around that too..

Best regards

I don't actually use or need that option. I added it to WPI to offer the same identical old behavior of the "load desktop before install starts" option since I made you change how that option worked and didn't want to bother the users who will expect to have the same old behavior.

A reason to have it would probably be to use it when you start WPI manually to have all the changes applied during the boot process in order to make the installs faster: with no desktop loaded there are less files in use so installs are faster and you can avoid rebooting again for certain updates, for example IE and its patches could install without another reboot. I tested the code and seemed to work fine, the code changes are minimal so I don't think that implementing them would cause any major problem however it's entirely up to you to chose to add it or not.

Anyway remember that I also did another change: I removed the "do not load desktop" option that now seems to be quite useless because when the install ends if you have "Load desktop before install" enabled the desktop would be loaded anyway. By the way, if you are going to add that change I forgot to add a "if (!LoadDesktopBeforeInstall) RestartSeconds=0;" line inside installer.js, in place of the previous "if (DoNotLoadDesktop) RestartSeconds=0;".